Losing Sight - <AUTHOR> http://tink.uk/losing-sight/ <comment><USER2> Two of my best coworkers are blind. They're ops people, so their job is computers. I don't think anyone can tell any difference in productivity between them and sighted people. I was surprised, initially, because I thought that it would be hard to work without the high-bandwidth data transfer medium that is vision, but apparently they make it work beautifully.

Also, it has shown me how hard I make their lives when I don't design with accessibility in mind. I didn't use to think that anyone with vision problems used the internet much, but it turns out not only they do, but they do the exact same things I do. This is a good tool for accommodating visually impaired people:

[https://khan.github.io/tota11y/](https://khan.github.io/tota11y/)

I guess I'm saying don't be a jerk, be mindful of sight-impaired people when designing your products.

<comment><USER3> > I guess I'm saying don't be a jerk, be mindful of sight-impaired people when > designing your products.

Agreed. Or name your javascript tool the same thing as the most popular screen reader.

JAWS: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005415)

JAWS: [http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS](http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS)

They even preserved the all caps. Now when vision impaired people search for their screen reader, they get results for a javascript framework, since they're both in the context of software as far as a search engine is concerned.

<comment><USER4> Seems like a very minor problem.

<comment><USER5> For someone who's sighted.

<comment><USER6> Really, though?

I always design with accessibility in mind, but I feel like there are more visceral complications than having to add a little extra context to a web search.

Almost everyone in development has encountered unfortunate name collisions that make what you're looking for hard to find... it's a pretty common inconvenience. Usually you just refine the query, like: "JAWS screenreader." The first result takes you where you probably intended to go, and it's at most 1-2 keystrokes away.

I think the real lesson here is to design inclusively. HTML has a lot of handy attributes to augment content; knowing & implementing the essentials means someone can follow the core flow of your site/application without relying on visual cues. And for the pragmatists... it has the added benefit of self- documenting and increasing semantic conformity in your markup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a Type I diabetic for — what is it now — 21 years, stories like this make my heart race.

I simultaneously admire the author's fortitude and am hit by powerful worry and frustration that facing the non-stop challenges of T1D for so many years can result in such outcomes — and often as a result of one's own imperfections facing those challenges.

The guilt the author describes when realizing she'd go blind had to be unbearable. Man I hope to work hard enough and be lucky enough to not face that.

<comment><USER8> T1D here too, echoing your sentiments. It's a terrifying reality to face. Perhaps foolish to say but I think I'd rather lose all of my limbs (another fun possibility for diabetics) before I lose my vision. Huge respect to the author.

<comment><USER9> As an aside, apart from the obvious "Keep a close watch on your glucose levels, take your insulin regularly, and do a glycosylated hemoglobin test every year or two" – are there any other things that diabetics can do to proactively ward off the chances of these happening?

<comment><USER10> You could try a low fat whole foods plant based diet to lower your risks. There has been research done for Type 2 Diabetes where this has helped reverse the disorder, and it helps in Type 1 too (although there's no cure for Type 1). See [http://www.pcrm.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/health/Type-1-d...](http://www.pcrm.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/health/Type-1-diabetes- fact-sheet.pdf)

Even if you don't believe this, just give it a try for a month along with your regular monitoring and insulin intake.

<comment><USER11> Uhm, there is also some studies on high-protein, low-carbohydrates diets, that is also giving good results for glycaemic control for type-1 diabetics.

And a lot of angry arguments and shouting too from people with various levels of expertise.

I know almost nothing on the topic, but my guess is that the key is to have a stable and low intake of slow carbohydrates, avoid fast carbohydrates, but most importantly - you should actually like the food so that you can stick to the diet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Down-vote me if this is inappropriate, but I'm actually working with a start- up at the moment that's attempting to make managing diabetes a bit less of a headache and possibly even an enjoyable and enlightening task:

[http://onedrop.today/](http://onedrop.today/)

It's a tough challenge and we hear all sorts of stories about problems that arise when people stop properly self-managing for whatever reason.

And I've worked on other healthcare projects and it really does seem like simple compliance -- getting people to do what they've been medically advised to do -- is a huge problem. Like, there are diseases and medical issues that are mostly solved. Except for patient compliance.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a mostly blind father, not due to diabetes, with a son that has type 1 -- this really hit close to home. I was diagnosed at 16 with retinitis pigmentosa, or RP for short. I am now 33 and have very little sight left, will probably be totally blind in the next ten years. I won't lie, it's been a struggle. The author of this piece describes the experience very well. But like her, I've been able to be a productive software engineer for the past 15 years and hope to continue.

For those who can't imagine anything worse than losing your sight, I can assure you that you're wrong. It's no picnic, but I can imagine much worse predicaments. Not having to look at yourself in the mirror anymore can actually be liberating.

Frankly, the toughest part about being blind is the stigma around it. I've lost jobs because my blindness made people uncomfortable. I've been turned away from job interviews because the interviewer didn't think I could do the job without giving me a chance to prove otherwise. Most people are great about it and are very empathetic. But there's still the occasional person who avoids me like the plague.

As for my type 1 son, I hope I provide enough of a dose of reality for him to stay on top of his blood sugar.

<comment><USER14> >But there's still the occasional person who avoids me like the plague.

It's hard for me to believe this, but I don't want to believe you.

>For those who can't imagine anything worse than losing your sight

I don't think it would be the worst, but I have trouble writing code as it is; don't kid yourself, you're a bad ass.

>Not having to look at yourself in the mirror anymore can actually be liberating.

I solved this by ignoring the mirror while in the bathroom even though I can see. It just seems to cause vanity.

As for your son, I wish you the best. I had a type 1 roommate in college, and he had some 'interesting' episodes that caused me great concern (i.e. failing to maintain awareness of his glucose levels). Keeping active skiing, hiking, and fishing seemed to help him a bunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems a long time since - if ever - I read anything touching on accessibility on the web with anything genuinely positive to say.

I know it's a hard, complex set of problems, but it really does seem that everyone essentially concludes "well, we're not there yet", and that's a real shame.

</comment><comment><USER16> _"... but given that I no longer really remember what I look like ..."_ Now that statement really made me think.

</comment><comment><USER17> Frustrating that companies like Pandora refuse to support basic accessibility features like dynamic type on iOS. It's a feature that probably costs 1 hour of development time. They know about it, and won't even put it on the backlog.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a software developer, this article scared the shit out of me. One of my biggest fears in life is losing my sight because of the challenges that would be presented being blind.

<comment><USER19> Honestly going blind is a fear for me for everything (never seeing my family or my SO smile again, or the rain, etc.) except programming. It would be hard but things like Emacspeak really make me feel like someone's taking care of the hypothetical vision-impaired me that could happen. It wouldn't be peachy but I wouldn't feel suddenly lost either.

My biggest fear for my job is injuring my hands irreparably as they are really my bread and butter as a programmer. I invest heavily in quality keyboards and personal tracking software (mostly self-written) to keep tabs on not going overboard and triggering the onset of RSI or other health issues related to the hand and wrist.

<comment><USER20> Emacspeak is a great project! For something more lightweight, take a look at speakup [http://www.linux-speakup.org/](http://www.linux-speakup.org/) What quality keyboard are you using? Microsoft Sculpt ergo? You can also invest in learning the Braille alphabet by using braille stickers on your keyboard and switch to a braille font.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One of the best programmers I know is nearly blind. He can see, a little, with the aid of a telescope-like affair that is mounted to a pair of glasses.

But the breadth and depth of his understanding of computers and software is amazing, and the code that he writes is some of the best I've seen: Very clear, very direct and unsullied by useless abstraction, and easy to maintain.

<comment><USER22> Which language does he use primarily? Just curious.

<comment><USER23> Naturally I can't answer your question about the specific person the GP was talking about, but FWIW, blind programmers are working productively in all popular languages (and some less popular ones too). Even significant whitespace, as in Python, isn't a problem, because the more full-featured screen readers can be configured to announce changes in indentation.

Accessibility of development environments and tools is another issue. For example, Xamarin Studio is totally off-limits because it uses GTK, and GTK is inaccessible on Windows and Mac.

<comment><USER24> >Xamarin Studio is totally off-limits because it uses GTK, and GTK is inaccessible on Windows and Mac.

Shit. Is there a bug report for this? (Upstream, with GTK)

<comment><USER23> There's this old bug, specifically for Windows:

[https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=303304](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=303304)

And this mailing list post from a few years ago provides a more up-to-date overview of the Windows accessibility APIs:

[https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel- list/2012-April/ms...](https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel- list/2012-April/msg00023.html)

Making GTK accessible on Windows _or_ Mac, never mind both, would be a lot of work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _> I wanted to know why I couldn't work out how much food (carbohydrate) I was about to eat, measure my blood glucose, and then calculate my insulin dose based on those and other factors._

Ouch. I suppose carb ratios weren't so big back then (admittedly, it wasn't for me either, being diagnosed in the late '90s). But I still measured myself so many times a day that the pharmacist thought I was scamming the PBS for test strips somehow (our subsidized medicines scheme here in .au). As a curious teenager I was able to develop a mental picture of what my BSL did when I ate certain foods after a few months of 10+ measurements per day. So, even if I didn't have an actual carb ratio figured out, I "knew" by trial and error how much insulin different foods needed.

Even so, I've fallen off the wagon a few times. I got so used to having specialists and doctors tell me what a great job I was doing on my own, I had an embarrassingly long period between specialists. To the extent that I stayed on humulin for quite a few years longer than I otherwise would have if I'd seen a specialist (newer insulins are way faster-acting and easier to live with).

This story has certainly prompted me to re-evaluate where I am now; complacency is a silent killer.

</comment><comment><USER26> Scott Hanselman manages to include quite a bit of useful information for tech geeks managing their diabetes (alongside his Microsoft evangelism):

[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Dia...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Diabetes)

</comment><comment><USER27> I suffered (probably still do) from myopic retinopathy and I underwent dynamic laser treatment about 10 years ago, it was very effective and I haven't progressed since. Basically they inject you with something that has to be activated by a certain wavelength of light and by timing the injections with the laser pulses they can just burn the new blood vessels and not the retina in front of the vessels.

My mom suffered from the same ailment a few years later and it appears that the treatment of choice is now an eye injection. It seems to me that the field is moving very fast, and the author of the article has been very unlucky not to have this just a few years later. Here's to hoping that we find a stable non-invasive cure in the very near future.

</comment><comment><USER28> It sounds like the risks of not using the medication properly weren't clearly communicated to her. "You'd better take it every day because it's important" doesn't count - people need to be able to make their own decisions about these things. The fact that she tried skipping doses as long as it didn't cause short term problems suggests nobody told her it was quietly doing irreversible damage.

I can imagine doing the same thing myself - and have often skipped prescription medicines. But if I'd been told the risks (not exaggerated unquantified risks) then I surely never would.

<comment><USER29> The tricky thing here is that really getting this message across can be _hard_ , and the doctors/specialists involved may not have any sense whatsoever what's going on inside the head of patient sitting across from them, nodding and looking a bit bored. And looking at them and seeing a parent figure, perhaps, some greying, slightly-ridiculous authority figure who's just setting up more rules because that's how they spend their time...

I remember some of these feelings; I've had an eye condition since I was 5 that gave me 20/200 vision at one point, and included various unpleasant treatments; fortunately for many years I've just needed to take eyedrops once a day and that's sufficient.

When I left home to go to college, I needed to find a specialist somewhere near school, and see them a few times a year to be sure things were under control. Think I handled that well? Nope, not really, but (to make a long story short) I was lucky that nothing irrevocable happened as a result.

At that age, I _was_ aware that poor decisions, even non-decisions (ignoring something that needed to be done) could have severe real-life consequences, but all that still felt unreal, and even now I sort of feel like rolling my eyes at myself for saying it. What kind of person writes phrases like "severe real-life consequences", huh?

It's an age for breaking free of constraints, and trading in external rules for internal ones (through some amount of trial & error); that's just a much more dangerous process for people (like the author at that time, and myself to a lesser extent) who are leading lives with lower error tolerances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thank you for sharing this, my most sincere condolences and my very best wishes to you in continuing to cope with your situation.

I am a recently diagnosed type 1 diabetic, hospitalised on my 29th birthday earlier this year. Not having received it as a child it is difficult for me to add to the post, but I do think that I can add some value by elaborating on exactly how tricky glucose monitoring and insulin dosages are.

Type 1 diabetes is uncommon in comparison to type 2 diabetes, if I remember the numbers correctly, it is about 10% of diabetics that have type 1. It is an autoimmune disease, meaning that your immune system, for some as-of-yet unknown reason, attacks your pancreas and destroys your ability to produce insulin. There is no medication or treatment other than injections of insulin into your bloodstream for the rest of your life. Personally, I had deteriorating eye sight over the course of several months and finally a very sudden urge to drink large amounts of sweet drinks and water.

As a type 1 diabetic you need to monitor your glucose level several times every day. The most common way to do so is to prick your finger and put a drop of blood on a one-use testing strip that goes with a digital monitor [1]. This is remarkably easy and you get instant results. It is however a relatively new invention and prior to this you had methods like urine test strips that gave far less immediate and accurate results. The most modern monitoring available would be continuous glucose monitors. They are essentially a needle with a sensor attached to a patch that you attach to your skin. This sensor then sends a signal to a device that you carry with you and that can warn you if your values are too high or too low. It is however not widely available in all countries, partially due to the cost.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_glucose_monitoring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_glucose_monitoring)

So, about dosages, how do you do it? Well, every person is slightly different, but there are tricks. You can use the same portion size of carbohydrates every day and keep your dosages fixed, or you can attempt to guess the amount of carbohydrates and adjust the dosages accordingly. What happens if you overdose? Nothing immediate, but over the next few hours or so you will start to feel lethargic, sweating, act "drunk", and in the end loose conciousness unless you compensate by taking in additional carbohydrates. As you grow older you may loose these signals and falling too low becomes increasingly risky. What happens if you underdose? Nothing immediate, but much much less immediate than with an overdose. You will have high levels of glucose in your system which gradually will wreak havoc on your eyes, feet, kidneys, etc., there will be consequences further down the line. This is one reason why getting insurance coverage as a type 1 diabetic is almost futile as pretty much anything could arguably be caused by your diabetes.

To add to all of this your dosages will vary due to what kind of food you are eating, carbohydrates from chocolate acts slower than pure sugar due to it being coated in fat that slows down the digestion. If you are sick your body is likely to be much more difficult to read and your dosages may change radically. Add to this that your immune system is significantly weaker as a type 1 diabetic. Dosages also vary depending on whether or not you do physical exercise, your stress levels, and more.

I really want a book describing all of this to me from the bottom up, molecular chemistry and all, so that I can better understand my own disease. For now I am gradually building a mental model from experience and picking up bits of pieces by reading.

There is hope in stem cell research and computerised systems that automatically read your glucose levels and inject an appropriate amount of insulin. But we are not there yet.

<comment><USER31> > This is one reason why getting insurance coverage as a type 1 diabetic is > almost futile as pretty much anything could arguably be caused by your > diabetes.

Do you mean that insurance won't cover things related to type 1 diabetes?

<comment><USER30> The insurance company will exempt itself from anything that could be caused by your type 1 diabetes, there are many of them [1], regardless of how well you keep your levels under control. I understand their position as treatment costs are very high, but that does not make it easier to be on the receiving end.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complications_of_diabetes_mell...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complications_of_diabetes_mellitus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's a lot of awesome work being done on T1 diabetes, particularly in the open source community. I highly recommend checking out the Tidepool Project ([http://tidepool.org/](http://tidepool.org/)) and The Nightscout Project ([http://www.nightscout.info/](http://www.nightscout.info/)).

</comment><comment><USER33> Amazing article!

Everyone does some version of that in their youth, I think. I did, for sure. But fortunately, my gotchas have all been relatively minor.

My vision is deteriorating, though. However, it's mostly cataracts and lens hardening. So I'll get artificial lenses, and probably won't need glasses anymore. Or I might end up blind, if something/someone screws up.

So it goes, I guess.

<comment><USER29> Contract surgery is pretty routine these days, fortunately. Be careful about who's doing the surgery, double-check that they're inserting the right type & power of lens, etc. (mistakes are rare, but it's worth double-checking everything you can) and manage your post-op care very carefully, but that's about reducing risks that are small to begin with; it's pretty safe -- especially if you're not dealing with more fragile eyes due to existing conditions (my case) or advanced age.

But if you do have issues to work around -- e.g., problems with the original capsule holding the natural lens, or other inflammation/etc. to avoid, there are even now a handful of different ways to attach an artificial lens that also work well; I have artificial lens in the original capsule, and the other that basically clipped onto the iris.

You'll probably need glasses anyway (for standard artificial lenses, you will) but possibly only for reading.

I use progressive lenses in my glasses (no more bifocals, these days); and generally reading, driving, etc. are just fine -- I don't think about it.

<comment><USER33> Thank you :)

In my case, it's just age. As far as I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think this was posted on here a while back [http://www.techinsider.io/hacked-raspberry-pi-artificial- pan...](http://www.techinsider.io/hacked-raspberry-pi-artificial- pancreas-2015-8)

Seems like the kind of wearable that could have a profound impact on peoples lives if done properly.

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latanoprost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latanoprost) eye drops can prevent/delay diabetic retinopathy

</comment><comment><USER36> I always wonder how people cope financially during their medical challenges. Life is already difficult even in normal times.

</comment><comment><USER37> Thanks for sharing your insights, very interesting read!

</comment><comment><USER38> He might get his eyes back. Stem cell treatments are coming.

[http://mobile.the-scientist.com/article/42863/eye-stem- cell-...](http://mobile.the-scientist.com/article/42863/eye-stem-cell-therapy- moves-ahead)

<comment><USER39> _She_ might get _her_ eyes back. It's right there in the second paragraph.</comment></comment>


What happens when you piss off the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://bufr.tumblr.com/post/19112788402/dont-piss-off-the-internet

<comment><USER2> Interesting story but I'll just be honest: I really dislike your type of humour. The video was painful to watch. Maybe that helped to get some hatred. I hope you get your game funded.</comment>


Google cloud engine is down - <AUTHOR> https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/16017 <comment><USER2> Sounds like a small scale outage, I wouldn't use that headline TBH. Amazon wouldn't even report something like this. We get various small outages from AWS every few weeks, and it doesn't even show up on their dashboards.

<comment><USER3> > We are still investigating network connectivity issues for a subset of > instances that have not automatically recovered. We will provide another > status update by 09:00 US/Pacific.

Sometimes they do. If enough customers are affected, Amazon is "required" to disclose. The number, however, has never been disclosed to the public so we don't know the rubric. I have seen announcement about partial AZ failures myself.

Google doesn't say how many customers and how many instances are affected by this, so I will take it as a partial AZ / DC failure (a good number of racks are having issues).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would explain the "phones are down" messages I have been getting. It apparently resolved before I was able to get to a terminal. us-central1-f if anyone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER5> We did see some http errors and latency spikes on our servers at us-central-1c but it lasted for a minute or so, without any downtime.

Have no idea if other regions or users had major issues though.

</comment><comment><USER6> All good on us-west

</comment><comment><USER7> Well architected applications be like... so what :|

</comment><comment><USER8> All good on us-east</comment>


Why Facebook (and everyone else) should sell your data. - <AUTHOR> http://samuelstern.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/why-facebook-and-everyone-else-should-sell-your-data/

<comment></comment>


Twitter Make Up: small open source tool to schedule changes on your profile - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nidup/twitter-makeup-service <comment><AUTHOR> Hey,

I was looking to code a small project this weekend, here it is.

It's a configurable scheduler to change my twitter display name depending on my activity, to change my banner to match the time of the day, etc.

The tool is coded with python + tweepy + schedule and packaged with a docker image.

Feel free to use it to make up your twitter profile, from to !</comment>


BBC Documentary: The Men Who Made Us Fat - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jxzv8

<comment><AUTHOR> The video might me unavailable if you're not in UK. Find the video here in that case: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIASWpnJRp0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIASWpnJRp0)</comment>


Open-source software has won the argument. Now a new threat to openness looms - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13740181

<comment><USER2> This is the usual, but valid, argument that as apps move to the cloud, we get a new kind of vendor lock-in.

The first step you can take is to use the Affero GPL instead of the old GPL:

"... version differs from the version of the GNU GPL on which it is based in having an additional provision addressing use of software over a computer network. The additional provision requires that the complete source code be made available to any network user of the AGPL-licensed work, typically a web application."

This doesn't solve all problems, as it doesn't cover software developed from- scratch by the big players.

<comment><USER3> I think an "Affero LGPL" would be good to get companies to contribute back library enhancements without "infecting" and thus having to give up their whole IP.

Regarding data portability, I've become a fan of json - it's easy to understand and process, and it forces interfaces to be simple (compared to xml, e.g.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing that a lot of people seem to forget in this debate is that there is room for all 3. On a personal level, I make extensive use of commercial software (especially MS SQL Server) for some things, wide use of open source software (FireFox and Python are first amoungst many) and some cloud software (gmail, google calandar come to mind).

On the business side though, I would be hesitant to ever advise an employer or client to make use of cloud resources for a few reasons. One of them is the lock in as mentioned in the article. Another is the risk of loss of data that is outside the businesses control. Another is the fact that the cloud service could upgrade the software in a way we didn't like with very little recourse on our part.

After all, there are times when you want to keep the older version. For instance, numerous businesses have declined to switch to Vista and I will not be leaving python 2.54 until some of the libraries I use finish their updating process.

Of course, all of the concerns I mentioned can be addressed, but it would require substantial due diligence on the IT side to verify that the cloud computing company has adequate protections in place and then on legal's side to ensure that they are contractually enforceable.

</comment><comment><USER5> For small, technically-oriented companies, this article probably sounds kind of lame. But think about 80legs, or SmugMug, or someone with a 200-machine farm and 20TB of data squirreled away in S3. Moving to a different cloud would be an expensive, tedious, big-bang proposition.

It doesn't matter how open the data formats are. If it's difficult to simultaneously use two or more vendors at a time, you are locked in.

<comment><USER6> What about the non-cloud version? Is it easy to move 20TB from one storage system to another. What about to a new data center? What about to a cloud provider?

I think if you have 20TB of data that you need to have online all the time, things are going to be hard regardless.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but if you have your own datacenter and some spiffy new software or device comes on the market, you can buy it and set it up. You can take advantage of innovation from anywhere.

If you are sitting in Cloud A and Cloud B introduces some new thing... you're out of luck until Cloud A (who knows you're not going to move) decides to offer something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not a threat to openness, it's a threat to portability. It's not quite the same thing. You can be open without being portable and vice versa.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the article includes SaaS as cloud computing. The SaaS portability problem has been around for years.

Cloud computing as I think of it-- AWS, Mosso, etc-- is generally built on familiar and open technologies. If anything it is easier than ever to redeploy an application with a different cloud provider...and vendors like CloudKick and RightScale make switching trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the economist has done more harm than good with this article.

<comment><USER10> For sure. Talk about "clouding" the subject. The cloud this article is talking about is not the "cloud" of today, it is the "cloud" of yesterday, i.e., this has been a problem since the first web app went online for commercial use well over a decade ago. Today's cloud, to me, is about software and service providers using cloud resources, and so far those are the same resources that were used in-house (Linux, MySQL, etc., etc.). There is little danger in getting data out of one MySQL DB and importing it into another at another cloud provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think Amazon has a chance of achieving serious lock-in with AWS, not by doing anything pernicious, but simply by adding so many valuable differentiating features that at some point (perhaps already) it will be too much of a pain to switch.

</comment><comment><USER12> rightscale.com is going to support multiple cloud vendors, and I would guess they'll offer consulting services to help people move.

</comment><comment><USER13> Come on, it's just another vendor. Being tied to a vendor is a choice we've always made, the beauty of Unix is the abstraction. Present an attractive abstraction and developers will come, not only because of the strength of _your_ provision but because we also have to recognize how hard it would be to change environment providers.

The Unix model presents files and folders, it is a fantastic model with a few operations. You present me with a file system and I'll manipulate it. We've spent 30-40 years building tools to manipulate files grep, sed, awk, join, sort etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't see any threats. Just don't use services that don't let you port your data. And encourage the use of those who abide by standards and fair play.

Demand portability!

<comment><USER15> Ask Richard Stallman about "Easier said than done".</comment></comment>


Pika – The JavaScript package registry for the modern web - <AUTHOR> https://www.pika.dev/registry?yc <comment><AUTHOR> Thread / Discussion on Twitter from this morning: [https://twitter.com/pikapkg/status/1196825435671158787](https://twitter.com/pikapkg/status/1196825435671158787)</comment>


The basic neurobiology behind the 12-dot illusion - <AUTHOR> https://theneurosphere.com/2016/09/17/the-basic-neurobiology-behind-the-visual-illusion-that-is-here-to-break-the-internet/ <comment><USER3> The fovea, the area of high-resolution vision in the middle of the field of view, is surprisingly small, just a few degrees across. The resolution falls rapidly outside the fovea [1]. A lot of the detail we perceive in the periphery is actually the brain filling in blanks based on "cached" data.

The resolution drop could in principle be taken advantage of in computer graphics, especially in VR applications with robust enough eye tracking [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovea_centralis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovea_centralis)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging)

<comment><USER4> Interesting idea about the eye-tracking for VR: offloading computation to the brain!

I'll make a correction that while minor, makes a world of difference: filling in the blank is more accurately understood as the brain making bayesian inferences or predictions or best guesses about what's missing or uncertain. The top down interaction occurring there is much more interesting than the term caching implies.

<comment><USER5> >filling in the blank is more accurately understood as the brain making bayesian inferences or predictions or best guesses about what's missing or uncertain.

Do you have any sources, or further reading, on that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The way the eye interfaces with the brain never ceases to amaze me. Another fun fact is that it even has it's own error correction mechanisms, one of which you can intentionally miscalibrate in order to see colors that aren't there for days, weeks, and sometimes even months after doing the calibration (which is acheived by looking at a very specific image pattern for a long time). I would not recommend actually doing this, as those who have have reported back that the illusory colors become quite distracting and actually cause a bit of emotional distress after many months, but it's crazy that the brain has this kind of chromatic abboration error correction programmed in in the first place. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect)

<comment><USER7> The color scientists who first told me about the McCollough effect adamantly refused to ever try it, saying it could damage your vision forever.

So I was scared to try it, but eventually I did and for me the effect went away after a couple minutes. Maybe I'm lucky, but the warnings & the legend of the effect lasting months make such a good story, I have to wonder if it's a little overstated.

But -- what if the effect is just as easy to unlearn somehow, as it is to learn? It's existence may have a lot to do with gratings being pretty uncommon in nature, leaving a weak spot in the system that is easily trainable and slow to re-adapt just because we don't stare at gratings very often.

<comment><USER8> How long did you stare at the test pattern?

For long-lasting effect mis-calibrating any of these low level visual recognizers, you need to look at the test pattern for quite a while. Just a minute or two isn't going to prompt a long-term effect.

<comment><USER7> Ah, you're right. That part was left out of the warnings I got. "Jones and Holding (1975) found that 15 minutes of induction can lead to an effect lasting 3.5 months."

I don't remember how long I tried the first time, but I'm sure it was not longer than 2-3 minutes.

The article says an anti-McCoullough effect can override the first effect. Can you also undo or override one ME with another ME using opposing colors?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure the central argument fully explains the illusion.

If you can simultaneously see several stars in the sky using your peripheral vision using averted gaze, why not several dots?

I suspect uncertainty plays a part, but image completion from higher-order feedback that complete the lines might drive the illusion more. Put another way, I believe if you remove the gray lines, the illusion ceases to work.

<comment><USER10> Because stars in the sky is a high contrast visual. That applies here too, I increased the contrast using Photoshop and the illusion is gone, you can see all 12 dots perfectly fine — [http://imgur.com/a/G4xR4](http://imgur.com/a/G4xR4) I think they are spot on, outside the fovea, contrast detection capability of our eyes dip drastically thereby blending the dots lying outside the fovea with the surrounding grid. Increase the contrast to the point where even the regions outside the fovea can detect it and the illusion goes away.

<comment><USER9> I don't think that explains it, either: Even in low contrast, the illusion fails w/o the lines, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER11> Without the lines... there is much higher contrast.

I'm all for hearing an alternative hypothesis, but right now this article's seems pretty good at covering whta is happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found that once I zoomed in to have only 6 dots on the screen and zoomed out, the illusion disappeared and I was able to see the 12 dots simultaneously.

I tested it on a friend and same thing but he had to stay zoomed in longer than me, for me it was instant, he had to stay focused 5 or 10 seconds.

And now I can't not see the 12 dots even 48 hours later without being exposed to the image.

<comment><USER13> I'm replying to you rather than making another top level comment to prevent sprawl, but I'm adding a different way the effect changed for me. (I'll probably try yours later, when I'm done playing with it, lol)

For me, holding a "picture" of what the picture is in my head and trying to heat map where I think my view is spotting the dots changed it from seeing about 4 (in a triangle or box) to about 6 (in weird squiggles). I think that actively trying to see it changes how my brain caches information as it moves the eyes' focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was looking into this when the 12-dot illusion came out, and found an interesting refutation of the receptive field theory regarding a related illusion - the original Hermann grid. I'm not sure if it also applies to the 12-dot illusion, where the illusion seems to be more about foveal/peripheral accuracy.

You can read about it here, and play with a demo:

[http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/lum- herGridCurved/index.html](http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/lum- herGridCurved/index.html)

[http://web.mit.edu/bcs/schillerlab/research/A-Vision/A15-2.h...](http://web.mit.edu/bcs/schillerlab/research/A-Vision/A15-2.htm)

<comment><USER15> Very interesting, thanks! Especially that second link.

Interestingly, I seem to have a little different effect than they did in the second illusion they present. First of all, I find there are three distinct perceptions, the left-right and up-down that they mention plus spinning (fan motion). I actually didn't see the left-right form at all until getting to the page with the larger star, although when I went back I could see it in earlier pages. On the page with rows of red x and green o with alternating color positions between rows, I see the top row as spinning and the other rows as up-down; after looking at it a bit longer than for the other pages to change it changes to all spinning, then can change back to just the top row spinning. Now when I go back to the similar colored dots page I see the same thing, although I didn't the first time.

Also interesting how you can affect what you see in that illusion - <USER2> reliably at first, but with increasing accuracy over a few minutes. Or at least affect what most of them do - that top row on some of them still does its own thing sometimes. I wonder if more complex perception changes would be possible with more practice. Very interesting stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's pretty surprising to learn how fast visual acuity falls off outside the fovea. Our brains are amazing at making us think we can see a wide field of view when we really can't.

This article was great, fun to read. I think this chart summarizes the whole thing:

[https://goo.gl/images/e4JKt4](https://goo.gl/images/e4JKt4)

If you fixate on the dot in the middle, all letters are equally legible to your eyeballs. This lets you see directly the difference in resolution between your fovea and your peripheral vision.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm no expert on either field, but this neurobiology explanation sounds a lot like what you read about in recent neural network posts:

You have some base layers taking in the physical information.

Some of those are connected in groups, somewhat like the a convolution stage scanning a sub-area.

Sometimes, some of those areas collectively show something interesting and pass it up. Kinda like max-pooling.

With artifical NNs, there are also images that fool the network in various ways.

</comment><comment><USER17> One odd thing I noticed. At the size the image displayed on my laptop, I could look at a dot and see the dots to either side, but not the ones above or below, even though they were the same distance apart. I guess at least my fovea must be a horizontal ellipse, rather than a circle.

<comment><USER18> I noticed the same. I wonder if this is a result of two horizontally separated eyes (assuming too too are not a cyclops), or a training effect of reading horizontal text regularly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This was a fascinating read about the neurobiology of the visual system. Loved it!

</comment><comment><USER20> The worst trait I see when domain experts try to write "introductory" material is a depressingly-common amnesia toward what it was like to _not already know_ their subject matter. This article is so badly written, so overly and needlessly wordy, that I'm honestly considering deconstructing it _line-by- line_ as a case study in how _not_ to write articles for the layman.

Here's a brief example, using the most jarring line I've been derailed by so far (I still haven't finished reading this article, getting hung up on runs like this):

> So what is the purpose of lateral inhibition in the retina? Let's consider > what kind of stimuli are optimal for activating this bipolar cell.

"What is _the purpose of lateral inhibition in the retina_?" Uh, hi - I _just got here_. We are _zero lines_ from the place where we were first _introduced_ to _any_ of these terms (the _last two words_ of the preceding _illustration 's detail_ are literally the _first place_ the phrase "lateral inhibition" even _appears_ ).

We've just been _shown_ this concept, _at all_ , for the first time - in a literally _microscopic_ illustration, with some concepts so unexplained they were just left for us to _hunt_ for ("Notice that a single neuron pools information" \- notice _what_? Notice _how_?) - and now we're supposed to be considering _the ultimate purpose_ for this obliquely-introduced phenomenon? Not only that - we're supposed to be pondering this now using a _neurologist 's lexicon_?

If we were _actually supposed to be following_ what the author is saying here, we'd be given some time to _reiterate_ this concept we were just presented from _one angle_ , to consider it in different approaches, with descriptions we _don 't_ immediately understand reinforcing a model we could build with _other_ descriptions we _could_ better understand.

Instead of _reinforcing its subject_ , the article spends time on aside paragraphs mocking what a non-neurological model of human vision might be (talking about Dennett's Cartesian Theatre), despite the way that _nobody reading this_ would have that misconception, and _introducing_ it only adds a concept so unrelated that it _actively impedes understanding_ of the material. Passages like this are just thrown in, like the author wants to say "I know more than you, and I want you to know that I don't just know neurology, I also took a philosophy course."

The line I excerpted _doesn 't even have to spend more time describing the concept_. Indeed - it's actually _more effective_ if you make it _less wordy_ , because a _high-level general description_ tells us which things we _don 't strictly have to understand_ to follow the next part. Here's how I'd write that whole paragraph - note how much _less_ I hang meaning on unexplained jargon:

> So, when a wide area of photoreceptors see the same signal, they actually > _reduce_ the signal seen by the tight cluster in the center. Why reduce the > signal like this? Because this way, when we see a _small detail_ \- one that > _isn 't_ surrounded by a big area of the same kind of light - that wider > group of photoreceptors (connected to the horizontal cell) _doesn 't_ > inhibit the signal. Getting stronger signals for _just the smaller details_ > is what makes stuff like dots and edges visually obvious to our human eyes.

It's not _perfectly_ clear - it still needs a round or two of editing to be truly _smooth_ to read - but, even as a _rough_ draft, that's smoother than anything in the linked publication, which reads like _didactic sandpaper_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bit of a harsh critique, though I appreciate reading people's comments on my writing. Ultimately, doing some writing over the past few months has taught me that I shouldn't necessarily underestimate people's ability to understand scientific concepts if only I take the time to explain them properly. I'm sorry that what I wrote wasn't sufficiently comprehensible :-( Also, I never took a philosophy class. None of what I said was meant to be pretentious or superior - I was just putting out there some concepts I found interesting.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, don't take it personally. Most of what I wrote there was just pent-up generalized frustration with a lot of published material out there. I regret not sufficiently framing my post within that context.

The authors I _really_ want to hit with this kind of critique are the ones who _aren 't_ embracing what you describe here:

> Ultimately, doing some writing over the past few months has taught me that I > shouldn't necessarily underestimate people's ability to understand > scientific concepts if only I take the time to explain them properly.

There's a troublingly large contingent out there that, as XKCD put it, [communicates badly and then acts smug when it's misunderstood][1], [confused about how communication works][2]. These are the ones I really take issue with: the ones who are pleased when the audience who can absorb their material is _small_ , interpreting it as _validation_ of their _own_ abilities (thinking "I'm one of a few people who can understand this"), instead of a _refutation_ of them.

[1]: [https://xkcd.com/169/](https://xkcd.com/169/)

[2]: [https://xkcd.com/1028/](https://xkcd.com/1028/) "Anyone who says that they're great at communicating but 'people are bad at listening' is confused about how communication works."

I particularly apologize for the part about it being pretentious to mention the Cartesian Theatre. While I _would_ cut that in later drafts for being irrelevant (which, like all irrelevant material, confuses the subject), it really doesn't come across as anything more than that, and I was especially projecting my frustrations from other stuff I've read when I characterized it like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> git to the point. tenthousand lines and one of importance. to paraphrase: as neurons are connected to form fields of perception, we can recognize shapes quicker, but as the fields grow, we cannot resolve smaller details. I'm sure I got some detail wrong, didn't want to copypaste.</comment>


Gambling, sex, Asperger's and my twin con-man brother - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/gambling-sex-aspergers-and-my-twin-con-man-brother/article1269317/

<comment><USER2> Con men with Asperger's? Call me cynical, but it sounds like another way to play on the sympathies of the people they conned -- people who fall for nerds. Sympathy from their victims will help them avoid the most aggressive prosecution and sentencing. Either that, or they're compensating _really_ well. Modeling a stranger's mind is the key to this kind of deception.

<comment><USER3> I was under the impression that people with Asperger's tend to be _really_ honest, to an abrasive fault. Not that deception is out of the question, just not the norm.

<comment><USER4> Autism/Asperger's is a spectrum disorder; there's plenty of wiggle room, especially in adulthood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been coincidentally re-reading "The Big Con" (highly recommended), and it is amazing to see how little things have changed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Please remove " - The Globe and Mail" from the title, since it says that afterward anyway. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER7> So they are andrewbadera's twin brothers?</comment>


How high school fosters suicide - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_high_school_fosters_suicide_VMtNhOBNUDqUdabVz6V4bO

<comment><USER2> It's not high school, it's anything that brings people of that age together for long enough for them to feel the need to compete, and for someone to lose.</comment>


You Can't Choose to Be Trad - <AUTHOR> https://fredrikdeboer.com/2020/01/17/you-cant-choose-to-be-trad/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting post. I'm curious for others' thoughts, because personally, I've never encountered an individual like the one described in this article.

>To be honest, I suspect that for a lot of people who really suffer from these kind of meta-theatrical problems of how to think and live, the real problem is just the internet. They're too online. The human mind was not meant to be constantly rubbing up against other human minds. It's all a big, creepy science experiment, all of this operant conditioning; we did not evolve for this. And rather than suddenly discovering conservative Anglicism, I suspect some people would be more fulfilled if they just found the courage to delete their Twitter. But for many people, I fear, to not be seen is to feel like nothing at all.

Is the author strawmanning a bit here? Are there really many too-online- Twitter-personalities turning to conservative Anglicism as a solution to their growing existential dread?

I understand where the author is coming from, that abandoning postmodern thought and embracing a premodern value system instead is in and of itself a postmodern decision, I just don't think many people _are actually doing that._

<comment><USER3> Personally, I've seen a number of individuals (mostly Zoomers) upset by the void of purpose left by the deliberate aimlessness of postmodernist thinking turning to religion for answers. They can't articulate it like that, but they have consistent things they mention that led them to this, "I've been told my whole life to do what I want and I don't even know what I should want, let alone what I do want." "I feel like I've lived my life just laying around doing nothing, and now I feel like I suddenly woke up from a long sleep." Outcry against cancel culture has similar subtext to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe that the author fundamentally misunderstands the apotheosis and ongoing nature of the traditionalist mindset. In his description of, and reasoning about traditionalism, he's attempted to understand it as an ill- fitted treatment for the pathologies of the progressive commentariat (this is especially obvious when he emphasizes the performativity of consciously embracing traditionalist values, and conflates, trad with a paleo diet).

I do agree with him that oversocialization is a component of the mindset. But he describes the adoption of traditionalist (Catholic) values as an attempt to achieve some form of moral certitude in order to escape the judgement of one's peers, the the fickle nature of the broader communal concensus.

This doesn't track with the traditionalists know, especially when he himself admits that the religious component of it is almost certainly ironic, or an aesthetic choice. The religious component may be percormatively observed, or authetically observed. In either case, it serves as pre-existing standard base from-which they rally that already broadly aligns with their values, and extracts only minor concessions from them.

Traditionalists aren't especially concerned with how society writ large percieves them, even when they're willing to acknowledge the subjectivity of values. In fact, there is an assumption they bear that they are an anachronism in an increasingly liberalizing world, even if they believe it's their duty to push against it.

The traditionalist instead, fixates upon diminishing social capital, blaming the individuization of morality, and anti-normative-value sentiment of the predominant cultural narrative for society's woes.

They likely already held their principals long before they'd ever heard the word "traditionalist". For them, traditionalism isn't an escape from collective judgement (their beliefs are out of vogue, and will certainly be the subject to judgement and ridicule). It is a label through-which to collectivise, in order to hold one-another to account, and receive feedback from those who share similar first principals to them (something progressives don't do).

I'd like to expand on my points in a child comment, when I'm in a position</comment>


Rules of Machine Learning: Best Practices for ML Engineering [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://martin.zinkevich.org/rules_of_ml/rules_of_ml.pdf <comment><USER2> These rules are also on Google's Machine Learning Guide[1]. I find the website easy to parse. Definitely an awesome resource to review before jumping into any ML project!

[1] [https://developers.google.com/machine- learning/guides/rules-...](https://developers.google.com/machine- learning/guides/rules-of-ml)

</comment><comment><USER3> Would like a version but for managers. "What to do before you decide on using 'AI' in your project."

<comment><USER4> There are a couple of good online courses I'd recommend in this context.

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for- everyone](https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone)

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning-business- pro...](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning-business- professionals)

You can try both of these courses for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great reference but it hasn't changed since it was published, several years ago.

Anything more recent, any updated comments you'd recommend?</comment>


Ask HN: How would you link to specific parts of a page? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
The other day, a friend and I were eating lunch and I was dropping my usual, subliminal "so, any cool neat ideas for websites?" type questions. He always seems to have complaints about the web, which are good for somebody like me (always looking for fun projects). After some discussion we started coming up with a pretty neat sounding idea.
The idea is to be able to highlight some text on a page, and create a permalink to the page that shows those highlights. For example, you're on Wikipedia and see a sweet quote, or really important word, and you want your buddy to read it. You could copy and paste it to him, over AIM or something, and then send him the URL, too. Or you could just send him the URL and say "scroll down to the third paragraph." Or, you could use this idea and highlight that quote or word somehow and create a permalink to that exact word. It would function exactly like HTML anchors do, but without requiring that page to have an anchor where you want to link to.
I don't know if anything likes this exists in a pure Javascript form or not. I know there are browser plugins that can kind of do this. I know some blogs append anchors to every paragraph for this. But, that doesn't really matter, I'm just trying to figure out how this would be possible without using those methods.
I was thinking in terms of Javascript, but I'm not sure if it's quite possible. I'm pretty sure you can't load up the page being linked to in an iframe and run javascript on it. I know you can't ask that page to load your JS.
Does anyone have any ideas on how this could be possible without a browser plugin?
Edit: I have also thought about a bookmarklet. This would allow you to generate a link to a certain area of a page, using whatever algorithms you had to find that area and create a link. But, I don't know how it would work in the opposite direction: going from link -> area of page. <comment><USER2> You could proxy the page, and rewrite bits of it on the fly (adding a class and/or anchors around the bit you wanted to highlight).

If I wanted to do this, I'd start by hacking for a few hours on <http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/> I'm pretty sure I could get a (non- scalable, resource hungry) proof of concept running in a evening starting from there - that'd be enough to start showing people and seeing if they even understand why you might want to use something like this...

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked on just this for last year's Rails Rumble:

<http://morsurl.com/>

The site acts as a proxy, injecting some Javascript based on SelectorGadget to allow the user to select parts of the page, and injecting inline styles to display the highlighted parts of the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, man. Cool name for it, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Done. No extension necessary.

<http://awurl.com/wcD8whqQG>

<comment><USER5> Clickable link to the actual service: <http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> also look at www.snip.ly -- it doesn't highlight per-se, but it brings the text you've selected in a lightbox over the original article. Like awesomehighlighter (which someone else mentioned, it won't work on NYTimes pages.

also, check out Diigo. It's the bookmarking service i use. They let you highlight text, add post-its, etc. as part of the bookmarking process.

</comment><comment><USER7> This concept sounds like a great idea for a chrome extension.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you could probably write an extension pretty easily, but that doesn't quite make the links very portable.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Depth or breadth? - <AUTHOR>

I've been a "full-stack" programmer since finishing my Master's in CS 6 years ago. My job had evolved from full-time coding to more of a management position until I switched jobs to get back to full-time coding. I'm currently working with some very senior developers and get to work closely with them and learn their tricks.
I enjoy coding, but I find that doing nothing but coding is starting to wear me down. I could stick with it for another couple of years, but I'm realizing that my long-term career goals are probably more in a "Development Manager" type of position where I can still be close to the code, but don't necessarily spend every day writing it.
I've been offered a Sales Engineer position within the same company, which isn't what I'd want to do long-term, but it would be a nice opportunity to gain breadth in my field. I'd be exposed to a lot of new technologies and would gain a surface-level knowledge of dozens of new tools. This position sounds refreshing and like more fun to me than what I'm doing now, but I'm unsure about the long-term career prospects/compensation/stability in these positions compared to a full-stack developer. (Are these valid concerns?)
I'm not sure how to proceed. If I don't plan to build my career around writing code 24/7, is it worth my time to try to build myself up from a "B+ programmer" to an "A programmer"? Or should I switch and focus on gaining breadth in my field? <comment><USER2> A sales engineering position will likely offer you a chance to get a lot more exposure to the business side of your company and a greater awareness of the revenue reality, how sales happen, what your prospective and repeat customers are saying/thinking about your product(s), etc.

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages." \- Henry Ford

That type of exposure, assuming you take advantage of it, will likely serve you well. Whether it's a better long-term prospect than a coding position isn't something I can judge for you and your company, but I'd encourage you to try it, especially if you've been 6 years at the current company.

<comment><USER3> This is fantastic advice. I went software engineer -> sales engineer -> software engineer without any issue career wise.

Seeing the sales side of business gave me a very valuable understanding of how businesses work, which in turn has made it 10x easier to be a consultant for companies. It makes it much easier to talk to company owners who want to hear about the value I offer them and their business as opposed to babbling on about whatever cool technology I think I'm hot shit in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're offered an intercompany transfer, why don't you counteroffer with something like:

"I'd love a change to test-drive the day-to-day aspects of the job before I can give a full-throated yes. Why don't I spend a month in this new role before we proceed?"</comment>


iPhone 12 and 5G: For once, the iPhone's experience will be out of Apple's hands - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-12-and-5g-for-once-the-iphones-experience-will-be-out-of-apples-hands/ <comment><USER2> >So why is Apple taking a gamble with 5G?

Because less than half of Apple revenue comes from outside the US. Apple is international company and it cant' afford to wait what happens in the US. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are not defining the global adoption rate.

It's interesting to see what happens with fixed wireless 5G. In some countries like South Korea you may have fiber+5G solutions may replace remaining copper installations in just few years. Fiber goes to home router or building router and rest is 5G.</comment>


Kleiner Perkins: Blockchain Tech Will Spawn Amazon-Sized Successes - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/kleiner-perkins-blockchain-tech-aol-success-stories/

<comment><USER2> Amazon is 20 years old and never had a profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they refer to the company (or spending) size rather than profitability. It's worth noting that their seed fund is only $4 million, a rounding error for KPCB.

<comment><USER2> How much did they raise in their IPO?

Is there a single class of stock?

<comment><AUTHOR> You lost me - Amazon or KPCB?

I assume the former. Current market cap of Amazon is ~200 billion. During the IPO they raised ~55 million for a market cap of ~440 million.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Parsers or pipes? How do you reliably parse input? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrspeaker.net/2011/06/29/parsing-input/

<comment><AUTHOR> Dammit - this was supposed to be a ASK HN. I either accidentally deleted the text before submit, or it gets stripped when there's a link. Either way, I am Asking HN!</comment>


Holographic technology adopted by Jaguar Land Rover - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-11-cambridge-holographic-technology-jaguar-rover.html <comment><USER2> Very little information is given on how this works. I suspect the word "holography" is misused. Anything that does not use an interference pattern to create an image from a coherent light source should not be called holographic.

<comment><USER3> While 'holography' is indeed often misused, this is one of the rare cases in which it is not. I have been to lectures by some of the people involved in these companies and this technology in which they've explained that the projector contains a spatial light modulator that is used to diffract the light from three lasers, one for each RGB channel. While this has the benefit that the image is in focus irrespective of how near or far the screen is, there are obviously some problems with noise. However, there is a simple solution to this problem: just calculate multiple SLM patterns for each frame, each of which has different noise, and display them rapidly so that the eye averages out the noise.</comment></comment>


What would you ask a YC Partner? - <AUTHOR>

I have the unique opportunity to talk to a YC partner tomorrow. I was wondering if HN had any questions you would ask given this oppotunity. <comment><USER2> Hey hmcm55,

If possible, can you please ask - What sort of opportunities are available to a Non-profit in YC? Our not-for-profit Helping Faceless is trying to fight child trafficking using technology meanwhile we are trying to create a sustainable model around it. bit.ly/helpingfaceless p.s: we have already applied for YC 2014

</comment><comment><USER3> Is he/she a technical partner?

<comment><AUTHOR> Geoff Ralston</comment></comment>


Chatbot lawyer that overturned 170K parking tickets now helps fight homelessness - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/08/donotpay-chatbot-lawyer-homelessness/ <comment><USER2> I fear if those 170K parking tickets were really unfair or were dismissed just because _someone_ (some _bot_ ) complained.

Either way it shows some malfunction of the tickets business.

</comment><comment><USER3> The ultimate and sadening conclusion of course is that if i were working in a government getting 170k parking ticket letters I would probably think about making a chatbot or AI to scanread/reject them. However I'm sure I would be rebuffed by some law saying its unfair to dismiss based on applications, so instead I have to spend extra taxpayer money to have a human evaluate each case.</comment>